 Good afternoon or good morning as it is here in the United States right now. My name is Robert Talbert I'm a professor in the mathematics department at Grand Valley State University in the state of Michigan here in the United States I'm really grateful for the invitation to speak to you This is a somewhat unusual setup and that I am pre recording this talk on video In fact right now as you're watching this I am giving another talk at another conference So I have the distinction today of giving two different talks simultaneously on two different continents So even though I'm not personally with you today I hope that my talk will stir up some ideas and bring about some important conversations among you About teaching and learning and as I'll explain in a moment I've set up some resources online that will allow us to interact and discuss what I have to say I'm going to be speaking today on the flipped classroom. You've learned a few things about the flipped classroom But in brief this is a course design methodology in which direct instruction moves from the class meeting times Into individual out-of-class experiences and the resulting time in the class meeting is repurposed For active work on more difficult cognitive tasks Typically this looks like students encountering and making sense of basic new concepts before arriving at class time I've been a practitioner of the flipped classroom now for about five years I've taught several different mathematics and computer science courses during this time using the flipped classroom model And I've written about it extensively in journal articles and at my blog casting out nines Which is published by the Chronicle of Higher Education and which you can access at the URL you see there on the screen I'd love to tell you that my experiences with the flat flipped classroom have been uniformly positive But unfortunately that would not be totally truthful What I'd like to share with you today are some of the failures that I've had with the flipped classroom What I've learned from them and some of the success stories that have resulted now before I truly begin I want to mention that I have set up an online discussion forum to field your questions about the talk and about the flipped classroom Generally, I'm going to give the URL and some instructions for using this discussion board at the end of the talk today And you'll be able to post your questions and get answers from me and from your colleagues So for now just make a note of any questions that you have and that don't get answered during the talk and post those to the discussion board later So let's get started So the first thing that I wish I had known about the flipped classroom when I started using it is That the flipped classroom has many benefits for students, but students will not always understand those benefits automatically The first time I ran a flipped classroom was five years ago I was teaching an introductory programming class designed for mathematics majors I designed the course and had chosen to flip it because I felt that students will learn computer programming best when they are actually Programming rather than listening to a lecture about programming This class meant once per week for 75 minutes The students watched videos and did practice exercises to prepare for class Then the class time was spent working on group programming assignments where students would apply the basic knowledge of programming to real life problems So there are a lot of advantages for running a programming class this way Students get access to high quality video and print materials that they use to learn basic concepts before class And then those resources remain in place forever for students to go back and use later Students also get practice learning new concepts independently Which is a critical and I would say the most critical skill that a student can acquire in their entire college education Students also wrestle with the hard part of a subject not in isolation from me But while I am physically present right there for them to consult Students also get large chunks of time to work on activities that help them make sense of the subject Now I could go on and on about the benefits of the flipped classroom The flipped classroom made sense to me because not only are students learning the content They are also learning broader skills that will serve them in learning any kind of content Whether they're in school or in the workforce Now most of the students in this computer programming class on the other hand unfortunately really hated the class What they expected from the class was for me to get up and lecture and do lots of examples of programming while we were meeting For many of them and for many students in general Teaching and lecturing are the same thing And so when there is no lecturing going on in class It means that there is no teaching taking place and that they are not learning anything The students didn't see the benefits of the flipped classroom that I've outlined here It was really hard work for them and their only concern was accumulating enough marks to pass the class They're not so much with preparing themselves for using the content or building their their self-regulated learning skills for later in life In short, the students and I came to this class with two completely different sets of assumptions about the very purpose of the university course And that disjointedness really resulted in a lot of significant friction Now what I learned from this experience is that university students don't have the same set of values as we instructors have as regards their education And although the benefits of the flipped classroom are real and obvious to us They just don't compute with many students who have a more grade conscious mindset And so the piece of advice I would give to new flipped classroom practitioners is Communicate on a regular basis to your students exactly why you have set up your class in a flipped format Demonstrate the usefulness of the skills that they are acquiring and explain to them that working this way allows you to help them more And sets them up for success later on not just for a good grade now Now I do want to share one success story from this programming class One student came to my office early in the semester with a concern about the class She claimed that she simply could not learn this way with having to learn basic concepts before class and then work on programming in class without a lecture When I asked her why she thought this way, she said she didn't know but she was sure that she could not learn this way So I asked her what are the three most important things you've ever learned in your life I believe her answer was speaking English her native language Being able to walk on her own and being able to eat on her own. That's a pretty good list I asked her to tell me then about the lecturer that she had for each of those tasks Because she's clearly skilled at speaking and walking and eating And so since she can't learn without lecturer at least so she says she must have had a really good lecturer for each of those things But of course, this is kind of a joke because she learned all of those things independently with help but also on her own I think this example made an impression on her because by the end of the class She was one of the better programmers in the course and she listed an improved ability to learn independently As the one thing she got most out of the course Once she realized that she did not really need a lecturer to learn new information She was on board of what we were trying to do And I think if we in higher education are interested in producing lifelong learners. This is a very important consideration to keep in mind The second thing I wish I had known about the flip classroom early on is That the biggest problem students have with the flipped classroom has nothing to do with the content of the course But rather it's simple time and task management I don't know what it's like for students in france But in the u.s students in school prior to university have highly programmed lives They spend hours in school and then more hours outside of school on sports school activities like music or drama and so on But although they're very busy very few students seem to have ever been held responsible for managing their time Or their tasks or the projects that they have going on This is mostly handled by their parents And it shows because when they arrive at university with a great deal of freedom They have no idea how to manage it and they end up getting into trouble academically because of it I didn't realize until just last year How much the flip classroom is predicated on students being able to manage the flow of information for a course independently But it makes sense. We assign students things to do prior to class in order to prepare for what will take place in class We expect students to manage their time wisely and get that pre-classwork none on time And that pre-classwork is not as simple to manage as a homework set Students have to decide how much time to give to watching video to doing reading to asking questions and so forth There's a lot of time management involved for students in a flip classroom And I think I was not aware of just how poorly prepared many students are for this For example, I had a student last year in a flipped calculus class who was consistently not turning in pre-class assignments on time If at all When I talked to the student about it, I learned two things First the student was taking nearly four to five hours to complete the pre-class assignments But they're only designed to take 45 minutes or less to complete and the student never sought out help He just assumed that they were really time consuming assignments and didn't realize that he was doing a lot of things inefficiently Second the student had actually never used a calendar before His entire life his parents had remembered his appointments for him Until he got to college and then just tried to keep all of his coursework and due dates in his head So half the time he would simply forget something was due because he didn't have it written down And the other half he would remember but not manage his time wisely So what I learned from this experience is that part of what flipped class instruction involves is explicitly teaching students how to manage time tasks and information And my advice to new flipped classroom practitioners is to make sure you devote time yourselves to discuss these issues explicitly and intentionally with your students For example, there's an assumption at my university that students should spend at least two hours outside of class working on a class For every hour spent inside class. For example, my calculus class met four times a week in 50 minute sessions Students therefore should plan on spending at least 100 minutes per class meeting Let's round that up to two hours working on the class That's two hours outside of class four times a week just on calculus I found that it helped to actually break down that two hours into specific atomic tasks to complete For example, students should devote one full hour to completing their pre-class assignment Which consists of about 15 to 20 minutes of video plus eight to 10 pages of reading plus some short exercises I would consider that actually to be a fairly short amount of time And students with weaker background should probably maybe double that amount Then students should vote another hour each night for other tasks like working on homework coming to office hours And so on Again, I don't know what it's like for students in europe But in the us students often make it through their primary and secondary schooling without much need for outside study time The average study time for students in high school in the us is maybe three to four hours per week total So when they get to university, they have the idea that it will be roughly the same amount of time commitment But in fact it is definitely not Now I like the flip classroom for many reasons One of which is that it forces students to work appropriately hard on their studies outside of class and doesn't allow students to simply slide by In many ways, it's a more academically rigorous approach to learning than a traditional classroom But it does take a certain amount of meeting students halfway and teaching them how to manage their time And I had to realize in that in addition to teaching content I needed to make time explicitly to talk about how to handle the course load But this is good, I think because again It's building those larger thinking and learning skills that students will need when they're done with school In fact, the calculus student I mentioned earlier is a success story He's an engineering major and by the end of the semester He had a little paper calendar that he brought with him everywhere and had learned not to keep things in his head But to commit them to a system and I think he will find a lot more success in school and as a professional engineer that way So the third thing I wish I had known about the flip classroom earlier Is that the flip classroom entails significantly more work at the beginning than a traditional classroom Now that statement might scare many of you away from using the flip classroom But I wanted to emphasize this phrase at the beginning In a minute, I'll explain why over the long term the flip classroom actually might yield a lighter workload Certainly a workload where you're going to focus on more important things So where I really encountered the heavy workload of a flip classroom first was in the fall of 2012 When I was scheduled to teach a class for our math majors designed to introduce them to the concept of proofs It's a writing intensive class and there's a lot of mathematical content in it And it has a reputation of being one of the more difficult classes in our program I decided to flip the two sections I was teaching mainly because I wanted students to spend time in class writing proofs and solving problems Not listening to lectures about writing proofs and solving problems We have a textbook for the course that lends itself well to this approach But I decided also to add video content to the course I made an outline for a video series that would cover the entire course And it eventually became a youtube playlist with 107 videos over 14 hours of video content on it I started on this video series a month or so before school started I did not finish it before classes started and in fact I was having to set aside an entire eight hour day Each week just to produce videos enough to keep ahead of my students On top of this I had to actually teach the course which as a writing intensive course involved grading 60 drafts of proofs Each week from students in addition to other grading tasks and in addition to a third course that I was teaching It was an incredible amount of work I finished the semester completely exhausted and wondering why I had decided to do this in the first place Now what I learned from this experience and advice that I would give to new flipped instructors is the following First prepare your flipped course far in advance and start working on it early I should have been working over the entire summer prior to this course to produce those videos But instead I had to put everything into the fall and make the video content while the course was running And that was a big mistake Secondly take it slow and if it makes sense for you don't necessarily flip the entire course the first time you're teaching it For example, you might choose to flip only a select number of class sessions like every friday Or if you have a lab session flip that or if you have an exam preparation session flip that Or just once a week when you want to have problem solving time There is no law that says a flipped class has to be entirely flipped It is certainly okay and maybe even preferable if you do this a little bit at a time Third and I can't stress this enough work with a partner if you can Now last year in 2013. I was undertaking to flip our introductory calculus class This was going to involve a lot of video making again And I had absolutely no desire to cause that much work for myself again So I found another instructor in my department who was willing to try flipping her calculus course as well We got together and agreed to split up the video making responsibilities roughly 50 50 By collaborating and having each other to use for ideas We were able to produce the bulk of a 91 video playlist for calculus in just 10 days time during the summer And then we were able to work at a normal pace during the semester And that calculus course is actually going to be my success story Now I said earlier that flipping a class takes a lot of work in the beginning But over the long term it could actually save you time if you teach the same course over and over again For example, I teach calculus quite a lot this fall I'm teaching calculus again and all the videos are completely made. I don't have to remake the videos The only thing I have to do is design in-class activities. That is a lot less work It's a lot more fun and it's a much more important for student learning The fourth and final thing that I wish I had known about the flip classroom is something I touched on earlier And that is that the flipped classrooms success depends on communication In fact, I would say that anytime in the past where the flip class has not worked for me as well as it could have It's been because of a failure of communication Maybe I didn't explain the workflow for turning in an assignment correctly Or I didn't communicate an expectation for the amount and kinds of work students should be doing outside of class clearly Or maybe I didn't touch base with that one student who had a problem and so on Usually my failures with the flip classroom have come down to either not communicating myself clearly to students Or not being as open to communication with students as I could have been For example in the programming class that I mentioned a little earlier where so many students had negative reactions to the flipping of the class I think a lot of this came from just assuming that students would understand the benefits of the flip classroom Automatically and just jump right on board But that was a failed assumption What I should have been doing instead was communicating why we're flipping What this will involve what students will get in return and then soliciting student feedback on a regular basis On how things were going More than that I should have been checking in with students personally on a regular basis to see how they Individually are doing I can absolutely say that better communication would have taken that bad situation and made it manageable But if communication is the key to a successful flip classroom This is actually very good news for us because communication can be very easy These days when I do a flipped classroom, I make sure I'm doing the following things First of all, I spend a good deal of time at the beginning of the term talking explicitly about the course setup Why it's going to help students learn and what the benefits are Secondly, I try to be super abundantly queer about the instructions for doing work in the flip classroom Which includes instructions on time management Thirdly, I make sure that I am soliciting student feedback on a regular basis in the form of anonymous surveys Clicker questions one minute status updates given at the end of class and so on Just giving students a lot of chances to voice their concerns voice their approval and say what they need to say And then I act upon any serious recommendation for improvement quickly to show students that their voice is being heard and that it matters And pulling students aside in a friendly way individually if they have any serious concerns about the course Fourthly, I try to maintain several open channels of communication for students to get help and to ask questions email and office hours and online discussion boards in addition to question and answer time in class So students never feel like they are being left completely on their own to teach themselves the subject without help Finally, I make sure to celebrate student successes For example, if students do really well on a pre-class exercise I will praise them for it and point out that they did this all on their own They did not need a lecture to understand something new Every flip classroom I've run in which I've been intentional about the quality and quantity of communication Has resulted in most students not only learning the content better than they would have in a traditional classroom Just as importantly they feel more confident about learning than they normally would because they've seen enough concrete instances of being able to learn independently that they finally believe in their own abilities They haven't had that belief for many of them since they were toddlers Realistic self-efficacy is one of the most important gifts we instructors can give to our students And the flipped class gives us lots of opportunities for this So those are the four biggest things I've learned about the flipped classroom that I wish someone would have told me about at the beginning Although the flipped classroom is something of an old idea I think its time has finally come to be in the mainstream of modern higher education It benefits our students and helps them to build lifelong learning skills and regain some contact with their basic human abilities to reason To learn and to grow I thank you for listening and I want to leave you with some instructions on the discussion board that I mentioned earlier That we can use to continue our conversation So to help further this conversation about the flipped classroom I've set up a discussion board for this talk and for flipped classroom topics in general at my website Just go to proftalbert.com Slash questions and you'll see a list of the questions that are currently available Each item in the list is a question and some of these questions will have an answer thread underneath them For example, this question has two answers to it at the moment while this one has none If I click on the question name It will take me to a place where I can see the question and the answers And then add my own answer or comments if I want to If you want to see a list of all the questions currently available click the button that says questions To see only the questions that have not been answered yet click unanswered to ask your own question click ask a question To search the questions and answers for a specific term type in that term to the box here and click search If you like a question or an answer you can vote for it or upvote it by clicking on the up arrow This will help distinguish better answers from not as good answers You can also include typeset mathematics in your question or answer as well by using basic lay tech and enclose inline math with slash parenthesis and displayed math in slash square brackets I'll be checking the discussion board actively during the week and you can continue to use it for as long as you like Although I am not a french speaker if you would prefer to give your question or answer in french rather than in english Please feel free to do so and I have a colleague here in the us who has agreed to help me with translating Again, thank you very very much for the invitation to speak with you today Thank you for your attention and I look forward to seeing you on the discussion board